Interview with Stanley Fahn, MD, FAAN: AAN President 2001−2003
Stanley Fahn, MD, FAAN
AAN President 2003−2005
Monday, April 24, 2017
Boston Entertainment and Convention Center
Boston, MA
Tim Streeter, AAN staff, Interviewer
(c) 2017 by the American Academy of Neurology. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy and recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the American Academy of Neurology.
TS: My name is Tim Streeter. I’m with the American Academy of Neurology, and I have the good fortune today to have with me Dr. Stanley Fahn, who was the president of the Academy from 2001 to 2003. Thank you for joining me this afternoon.
SF: I’m pleased to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
TS: My first question is, when and why did you decide to become a neurologist?
SF: Well, my interest in the nervous system goes back to my first year of medical school actually. I fell in love with neuroanatomy, and I was the only one in my class that got a 100 on the exam. And so, I had some interest in the nervous system way back, but neurology at my medical school was weak in those days―actually, it’s an outstanding medical school today [and] is probably ranked number one, the University of California in San Francisco. But the neurology was fairly weak in that department. Neurosurgery was strong. I remember being grilled in clinic by the neurosurgeon, “Name all the cranial nerves. What orifice do they go through in the skull to get to the brain?” and so forth, and I was able to manage it because he guided through it. I sort of fell in love with neurology, as I said, but I didn’t think I was going to be a neurologist. It was weak. Maybe I’ll be going to neurosurgery. So, I decided to take rotating internship. I couldn’t decide rather than a surgical internship, and my first year—or my first month of rotating internship—was in psychiatry, but he sort of talked about the nervous system, how it develops, and so forth, and I fell in love with neurology just then and there. So, I elected to apply for residencies in neurology, and I finally went into neurology, so it started way back in medical school though.
TS: Now, you joined the Academy in 1960. Is that correct?
SF: Probably—it might’ve been 1959 even. I’m not sure, but I—no, you’re right. January 1960 because I became a resident in July 1959, and I decided to join the American Academy of Neurology as a junior member—as a resident—and I think I waited the six months until I would get the full-year subscription starting in 1960, so I did join in 1960, yeah.
TS: And what were your needs then, as a resident, from the Academy?
SF: Well, my needs were both to be educated in greater detail and learn things I possibly couldn’t learn in my residency or learn from other people, and going to the Academy meeting was very important. Of course, getting at the journal and read about all the articles, and if I were going to go to the American Academy of Neurology’s Annual Meeting, which I did as not only to take some courses but also to learn more about research and what was developing in the field and then some of the interesting science platform lectures at that time. There was no poster session. It was all platform sessions, and I didn’t know what subspecialty I was going to go into. Eventually, I went to a subspecialty, but in those days, I just wanted to be a good general neurologist.
TS: Now, you studied with Houston Merritt, correct?
SF: Yes, he was my director of neurology and, yes, my first professor.
TS: He was kind of skeptical of the Academy. He told—reportedly, he told Robert Fishman that he didn’t think it was going to amount to much.
SF: Well, Houston Merritt was in the old school, he was the eastern establishment along with Ray Adams and Denny-Brown from Boston, and they were big supporters and past presidents of the American Neurological Association. Their annual meeting was in the summer month of June, always in Atlantic City. I remember we as residents—it was a short drive from New York City to go to Atlantic City—we would go there, stay at a cheap hotel, and go to the meetings. Houston Merritt with Ray Adams and the other senior guys were on the front row of all the—there were only platform presentations in those days, and it was very interesting meeting and was the established organization. It is the oldest neurological association in the world actually, and it was here in the United States, but it was mostly an eastern establishment, and I think the American Academy of Neurology was the young upstarts in the Midwest. And so, I think the eastern senior [establishment] sort of put it down.
TS: Did he ever come around to—
SF: No, I’m not sure he ever did come around. He just stayed established with the ANA.
TS: How did you get involved in committee and leadership positions within the Academy?
SF: Well, that all began—I became involved when I was at the University of Pennsylvania. I knew I wanted to go into research, so after my residency I elected to take a laboratory fellowship in neurochemistry at NIH. In part, that also served my obligation to the military service. I was exempted from the Korean War at that time, but I was still subject to the doctor’s draft, so they had to finish my training and then I would join the service, so NIH satisfied that. At the same time, I was getting my research training, so I started working. I wanted to do microchemistry so I could eventually work on human brain tissue maybe from biopsies and so forth or during surgery, and so I wanted to study chemistry. I was interested in degenerative diseases, and so I went to NIH to get that training. When I finished training, I was invited back to Columbia for a faculty position by Mel Yahr at that time. He just got a big NIH grant to do Parkinson’s, and that was the time when there was a big breakthrough coming along—well, actually, it was before the break. Anyway, I got a job back at Columbia. Then Bud Rowland, who was a young professor—assistant professor, maybe it was associate professor—at Columbia at that time—took over the chairmanship at Penn, and Milton Shy was invited to become chairman at Columbia, so Rowland decided to leave. They were both in muscle fields, and the two of them met and decided they would just switch labs. Shy would take over Rowland’s lab in the muscle chemistry and Rowland would take over Shy’s lab at Penn and muscle chemistry.
Rowland had a mind to have a clinical research center in neurology and he asked me—since I was working in the lab and I had done some work in Rowland’s lab at one time when I was still a resident at Columbia—if I would be his associate director, and I did.
While I was there, he asked me to start a Parkinson’s clinic. He didn’t have one at that time, and I said, “Well, I really don’t want it to be just Parkinson’s, but all other kinds of related disorders.” I needed a good name for it. We sat together trying to think of what the name should be, and he was the one who came up, “Well, can we call it a movement disorder?” They said, “That’s it. It’s going to be called movement disorders.” Prior to that, it used to be called extrapyramidal disorders, but there’s something wrong with that name. It’s not anatomically or physiologically correct. So, we picked movement disorders, and I started the first movement disorder clinic, and I had been—while I was there, I was working on pharmacology of L-DOPA when I was at University of Pennsylvania, I got invited to give some talks at the American Academy of Neurology meeting, and one of the courses, the pharmacology course neuropharmacology. So, I got invited to start giving talks. I gave research papers at the Academy. People started to get to know you when you give talks, and eventually I was asked to join one of the committees, the Science Committee, and then even the Neuropharmacology Fellowship Committee evaluating other young people to get fellowships. And so, I sort of got involved that way.
Ultimately, from the Science Committee, I also joined—I was asked to join the Education Committee, and subsequently when Ted Munsat became president of the Academy, he came to me and asked would I like to move up to the chairmanship of that committee, and I hesitated. He said, “You ought to do it because we need you. It’ll be good for you,” and everything. So, I did that, and then I made a lot of innovations in the Education Committee and sort of moved up the ladder that way.
TS: What would be the challenges that the Education Committee was facing in those years?
SF: Well, I considered several different problems. The number one problem I thought which I didn’t like at all was that when I first joined the committee as a junior member, they were picking the heads and the speakers, the chairmen of the different courses, and the speakers for the courses like over a year ahead of time. They’re not even waiting for the previous—it was like it was a year and a half ahead of time and not waiting to see how these guys would do the year before. I mean, I thought that wasn’t so good. So, when I became chairman, one of the first things I did, I said, “Look. Once we finish this cycle, we’re going to start a month after the course Annual Meeting is over and we have 11 months. We’re going to pick our chairman, we’re going to get the speakers settled, and we can do it. All we have to do is work at it.” We made that innovation right away.
Then, as chairman, I did a number of things. I opened up the committee. I asked people in the American Academy of Neurology membership of who they want to apply. We will look over their CVs and make a decision. We tried to get new people on the committee every year. One of my other hurdles in that very first year I was chairman was with the A. B. Baker Education Section. It was not a committee. Up to that time, committees worked with committee members. They didn’t work with sections, but the A. B. Baker chairman and their section wanted to be part of the committee. They wanted to make the committee decisions. It was a problem. Are we going to have sections and committees together? What—so, I made a compromise deal. I said, “Look it. We’ll bring you on as ad hoc members but nonvoting members, so you’ll have a say. You can pose your programs and so forth, but you’re not really a committee member but an ad hoc committee member,” and they accepted that. We’ve been pals ever since. They got what they wanted. They’re still a section, but yet they contribute to the Education Committee.
Another early task was strategy planning. What was this committee going to be doing and how are we going to organize it? We had our first strategy meeting, and I had to work with the different heads of the staff dealing with education. Christy Phelps, at that time, was the junior staff just hired by the Academy, and she was assigned to me. So, I worked with her all those five years or so I was—or six years maybe—as chairman of the Education Committee. We developed the program, and we worked closely together by telephone mostly, and we set the program right so there’d be no overlap, there would—and another thing I did—this happened when I was on the Science Committee—I proposed that they should have poster sessions, and no one wanted to have poster sessions. No one would go to poster sessions. They were—
TS: Had they ever done those in the US before?
SF: They never did poster sessions at any place in clinical neurology that I know of, but since I had been a lab scientist also, I had gone to basic science meetings, and there were poster sessions. What I was impressed about was people would come after the full day, and then at the end of the day, they would have wine and cheese and everybody would go to the poster session. So, I proposed this. I said, “You know, if we give them something to eat, they will come, and if we have poster sessions at the end of the day with wine and cheese, they probably will show up. If we do something in the morning at breakfast like a donut and some coffee or orange juice, they will show up.” And sure enough, it took off, and that was the start of the poster sessions.
TS: Well, you were also responsible for starting the evening sessions too, correct?
SF: Well, that—yes, I was. I decided that we needed to have, like, case studies. Because I was by that time a subspecialist in movement disorders, and I knew movement disorders are very good educational tool with videotapes. We can show our cases, we can ask for discussion by the audience, and we can have a one-on-one with the audience and with the two professors teaching it. So, that worked out. Then, pretty soon we were doing case studies in neuromuscular disease, epilepsies, and all the other subspecialties, so that started the evening thing. Then, the question was, eat dinner or after dinner. We decided we would have both. It would be a dinner thing that would cost more money to go to because there’d be dinner involved, but they can also have after dinner sessions. It would be a little shorter and it would be a little cheaper to come to, and that’s how it evolved.
TS: I read that some of those sessions went quite late, that they enjoyed that exchange of knowledge.
SF: Well, that’s probably mostly true for my own section. I started what’s called the Unusual Movement Disorder Seminar with my colleague from London, England, David Marsden, and I felt he was the leader of the European movement disorder people and I sort of had that reputation in the United States and that we would do unusual movement disorders, and we would show our own cases on movies. In those days, we didn’t have videos even, just movies. We would splice them together, but we opened up to the audience that they can bring their movies too, and eventually, of course, everything went videotape. They would bring their videotapes in those days after that, and we would show them. So, we would show some of ours, some of them, and then these would be opened up for discussion. What did we think we have? What’s the phenomenology? What do you think the diagnosis is? It evolved, and pretty soon it was packed audiences.
Initially, Christy Phelps and the Education Committee said you can only have 60 people, you’ll never have give-and-take. Not only did we have 60 people, but we had more sign up who couldn’t come in. They waited outside. When the monitors weren’t there, they all snuck in anyway, and we were still having one-on-one takes, and we didn’t stop discussion. Discussion was going on, and then finally around two in the morning, we would finish, and we’d go out and have a beer and go to bed and try to get up for the next morning. I mean, eventually, we even had two sessions, one at the beginning of the Annual Meeting and one at the end of the Annual Meeting so everybody can come. We had packed houses. I did that for 20 years before I retired from it.
[Break for technical adjustments.]
TS: Okay. Now, in recent years, the Academy has reduced the number of evening sessions to give attendees more time for networking and leisure activities. Do you think that that’s a loss to not have these evening sessions as you experienced them, or do you think that there’s still enough going on at the Annual Meeting where everybody can get their fill?
SF: I think there’s so much going on in the Annual Meeting it’s hard to decide for us to—or platform session to go to let alone all the posters to go to, so I’m not too worried about it. Every year, the Education Committee meets, they discuss all these things. The Meeting Management Committee discusses everything, and they get feedback. These committees are very effective. They will follow what the memberships are telling them. If they have a complaint about something, they will make the change. If they have a complaint about a speaker, they’ll make the change and so forth. I’m not too worried about it. I haven’t participated in the Education Committee for a number of years, so I don’t know what the current issues are. If they decided to move a certain direction, well, they should try it even if it’s trial and error. If it doesn’t work, they can switch back.
TS: You were on the Annual Meeting Subcommittee, the Meeting Management Committee, for many years. What were the challenges that were faced in keeping the Annual Meeting fresh?
SF: Well, that committee has changed over time also. I think the original committee when I was on it was like picking the next—what location the Annual Meeting’s going to be held at. We ended up having to pick ten years in advance because we needed a big place that’s going to accommodate everybody, and so that was one of the issues. That’s still an issue. Every year, that comes up, picking the future meeting site, but then it became many other topics of discussion, not only how the meeting is run but the transportation, the bussing, issues involving exhibitors came up. If an exhibitor cheated by doing something―by having something outside what the scheduled contract was or they had a private meeting when they weren’t allowed to―it interfered with our time for having our science and education courses. They’re not allowed to have their own meetings during those times. They have to write for permission, so for—if anybody—any company was caught, they would be penalized, they would be not allowed to present on the exhibit floor again for another year or more. So, all these things came up at the Meeting Management Committee to discuss and to make decisions.
Then, when I became chairman of that committee, ultimately, I decided we also should try to find out why members of the Academy don’t come to the Annual Meeting, why only certain people come and not everybody. So, when we had our quarterly meetings and we would go to a different city for a quarterly meeting—let’s say we’re going to San Antonio or something like that—we would invite the local neurologists who didn’t come to the Academy meetings who lived in San Antonio to come and meet with us at breakfast, and we’ll ask them questions about it. What is it about the Academy they didn’t—why they don’t go and learn about it and try to improve our meetings so we can accommodate all of our members. So, all these kinds of things are discussed at the Meeting Management Committee.
TS: Because ultimately, it’s the members that you need to please, right?
SF: Well, that’s it, but as you probably know, almost the majority of people that come to the Annual Meeting are probably not members. I mean, they come from foreign countries. About a third are neurologists from overseas, and then members—some are scientists that come, some are non-neurologists, even, that come that are not members. So, we get a lot of nonmembers. This is an international meeting in a way. It’s not just for Americans. In fact, when I look in the hallways or I run into people, there’s my friend from Argentina or somebody who knew me from Brazil or the guy from Germany last night. And so, there’s a lot of people from overseas, and they like this meeting a lot. The meeting’s been very—this is an outstanding meeting, and neurologists from all the parts of the world not only like it, they try to emulate it. They are learning from how the American Academy of Neurology runs its meetings.
TS: Do you think—now, there are 13,000—more than 13,000 attendees here in Boston. Do you think it’s possible for the meeting to get too big?
SF: Well, everything’s possible, but there are bigger meetings. The Society for Neuroscience gets over 20,000. Somehow, they manage it. We need a big place, and we need to be personalized for everybody and feel they have a voice somehow and they have people to talk to and there are events. I’m impressed. I mean, I’ve seen this meeting, which is not something that was done when I was the president of the Academy, feeling good about yourselves, yoga sessions, massage sessions—all these other things to accommodate the younger generation. I think they like it. I was walking past, and I saw a big lineup for the massage chairs. People like that, so this is good. We’re accommodating. We’re helping people wanting to come to the meeting. This is one of the things they crave. Let’s do it.
TS: And we’re becoming more family friendly too. We’ve got a family area there.
SF: That’s right.
TS: One of the things that was introduced during your time was the Contemporary Clinical Issues Plenary Session. What goes into deciding that the meeting is going to add a new plenary session?
SF: Well, that’s a very interesting point because early on, there were like only three plenary sessions. At one point, the Academy had like three days of courses and three days of science and the plenaries. Then they eventually had more plenaries so now they’re mixing science and courses together as you know for the whole entire time of the meeting.
At one time, there was only three plenary sessions, and they’ve expanded. So, the Contemporary Clinical Issues Session is very interesting. I wasn’t a member of the Science Committee when they decided that, but I welcomed it. They had one this morning. It was outstanding. I work in my field of movement disorders, but this is—for me to go to these sessions and learn what’s happening of highly innovative new ideas in other parts of neurology—was very educational for me, so I learned from that. I’m sure all the other attendees did also. That is really attractive. That auditorium is packed, so if there’s 14,000 people here, there may have been 10,000 people in that meeting. It was really good. This is true of all the other plenary sessions. I think that’s an outstanding feature, a little on the posters and the platforms of science and the courses. I think the plenary sessions are really one of the highlights.
TS: The Annual Meeting, while you were president, included a program on biological and chemical threats and neuropsychiatric effects of terrorism. Was that an outcome of the 9/11 attacks?
SF: Yes, it was an outcome of that. That attack alerted us that there could be other attacks in the United States. We have to—how are neurologists going to be prepared for that. I remember one of our speakers was a neurologist who served in the Army, was a colonel, and he was involved with that. In fact, I just saw him at the last session I was in before coming to this interview with you. He’s now retired from the Army, and he does some teaching in neurology though. He was telling me he used to go to the White House every month to discuss all these issues, and he was one of our speakers in that particular session.
TS: Could you tell me his name?
SF: It was Jonathan [Newmark, MD]—I’m blocking his last name right now, so unfortunate, but his first name is Jonathan. I’m blocking on his last name, so I’m sorry. I apologize for that. I apologize to him for doing that. It slipped my mind.
TS: Okay. I can look that up. That’s okay. I put you on the spot. That’s why. But do you think neurologists are prepared to deal with these sorts of emergencies? Is this a program that is continued at the Annual Meeting to keep people fresh?
SF: I don’t think it has to continue. We’re probably not well-prepared. I mean, we depend on others who are more attuned to this. So, I think whether we need to do this again, that’ll have to be a decision made. A lot will depend on what the state of international affairs is and everything else, of course.
TS: The Academy held its first fall regional conference during your term. What was the idea behind adding another conference?
SF: Well, that wasn’t—another thing that came up in the annual Meeting Management Committee is whether we should have another conference. As I said, there’s—over half the members don’t come to the Annual Meeting, and so why not, and some of them said the expense is too much to come here. They have to pay to travel, they have to pay the hotels, the meals. Why don’t we try to have regional meetings in different parts of the country in the fall—you know, six months between our meetings—and have people in that area come. It was not a success. We didn’t get funding for it. We never got all the attendees we wanted. Eventually, they settled to have one meeting in Las Vegas. We would get support from some pharmaceutical companies as well, and we focused in on that. That became at least self-sustaining in terms of financial, and that worked out pretty well. Now, I think the idea is if we can work that well, we might be able to go to other regional places in addition. So, this is an evolving issue that the Meeting Management Committee will come up an answer, but it’s good that a lot of people want to go these other meetings.
TS: There are plans to bring the winter conference back.
SF: Well, that’d be good too. Sure.
TS: And we also have the Sports Concussion Conference and the Breakthroughs in Neurology Conference. Do you think there’s a point where they can cannibalize from the Annual Meeting and there’s maybe too much of a good thing from a revenue standpoint or attendance standpoint?
SF: Well, one way they were trying to cut down expenses is to cannibalize from the Annual Meetings some of the speakers in the Annual Meeting come to the regional course, so they have their work already done, their syllabus already prepared so they’re not so onerous a burden on the speakers and have fewer speakers that don’t have to pay their way. As you know, most people who speak or members of the Academy are not paid to come to the Academy to give their talk. I mean, they’re paid for their talk and their syllabus and everything, but their travel isn’t paid specifically. They get it an honorarium for their speaking, but I think if you go to these regional meetings, the Academy pays their transportation as well. So, it’s an extra expense, whereas the Annual Meeting you’re expected to go to the Annual Meeting on your own dime, so it’s quite different.
TS: Looking at education during your term, the ABPN introduced maintenance of certification around this time. Did the Academy or any other societies have any input into this before it was adopted?
SF: Well, there was some input. We do have representatives on the board from the Academy. In fact, all the neurologists on that board are members of the Academy anyway. So, there was some input, but there was a lot of discussion at the Academy and what does it all mean to our members. This was a major discussion at the time at even our Annual Meeting to discuss all this, but we sort of went along with the board and that was it. We just had to adapt. The question was how are people going to retake their board exams. It’s going to be hard for the subspecialists that they work with. Say, my field of movement disorders or let’s say you’re in epilepsy. We might not keep up with general neurology, and yeah, you have to take a board exam again. So, all these issues came up, and that was the development of the Continuum to provide a source of knowledge, and maybe the questions from these annual board exams will people be trained by reading Continuum and learning from that and maybe the questions would come from that. And so, these were things that the Academy was trying to do to help our members take the board exam again.
Another major issue came up when I was president of the board was that the ACCME was not going to allow us—that is, programs and neurology training programs—to allow people to get visas to come in to do subspecialty training if they were not board certified. As you probably know, the board only certifies a certain number of subspecialties, but many subspecialties are not. Movement disorders is not. Yeah, we would get some foreign people who would come over, neurologists who want to come over for training. They would need a J-1 visa, and they were not going to be certified. The ACCME says, “Well, the board hasn’t approved it. It’s not a board program, so how can we, ACCME, approve it?” So, I had to personally call every neurologist on the board and tell them how it impacts our subspecialty training programs in neurology. They all voted to do away with that and to allow J-1 visas to be given to non-board-certified subspecialties as long as the subspecialty has been established, one that’s not a crackpot new subspecialty. And so, that worked out well, but it took quite a few phone calls and persuasion to get rid of that onerous burden we were going to have to our foreign neurologists who wanted to come to the United States for further training.
TS: Neurology Today® was launched as a monthly publication. What was the need that that fulfilled?
SF: Well, it had a couple needs. First of all, I felt that neurologists might want to pick up a newsletter type of journal with the highlights instead of a whole detailed research article in the journal Neurology®, let’s say, or some other journal. This would be the highlights of some of the important things happening in neurology and research neurology other issues in neurology including government funding and health care in general. And so, it would serve a need for our members. That was one thing. It was quite a different improvement for our membership dollar. It would get this other publication. Second, it would also help perhaps provide revenue because maybe we can get advertisements and so forth and that would help support it and bring some more money to the Academy. So, we had dual benefits out of that. Dr. Rowland was our first editor of that when Steve Ringel was the associate editor. And so, they launched, and it was very successful. It’s still published today, and the issue that came out at the time of this meeting had an obituary about Bud Rowland who just died a few weeks ago. So, it is a vital piece of information that people read. They can take it with them when they’re on a bus or a train or on a plane and just relax in the evening with a newspaper. You can read it very quickly.
TS: You mentioned Bud Rowland. He was an editor for the Neurology journal, editor, as you said, of Neurology Today, Academy president. What was it about him that made him such a superstar?
SF: He was a superstar and there are many things about him. First of all, he’s an intellectual giant. He was a great editor among other things. That’s what he was always noted for, his red pen. He would never accept a paper for Neurology—let’s say it was approved by the reviewers without him—then going over and editing so it was very precise, very accurate, eliminated words that were unnecessary, and as people get their papers back, he said, “This paper’s accepted, and these are my edits. Please look them over and see if you approve of them,” and so forth. They were all impressed how good the paper reads better than what they wrote.
TS: Once they got over the initial shock of all the red, I suppose.
SF: Yeah, but they ended up—they were treated with respect. He really spent time looking at their paper in detail and improved it. It wasn’t that he tossed out things that weren’t good. I remember even when I was a scientist trying to write papers, I would ask him to read it before I would send it off to a journal. He would edit my drafts, so that improved my papers. He always did that for all the members of our department. He was a very good editor. So, he had a lot of integrity. He looked out for the common man, looked out for the junior person in the department, the junior investigator, tried to help them get funds. He encouraged them to go into academics to do research. He supported them. I mean, you might come up with an idea and you’d talk to Rowland about it, and he would give advice. I know he was disappointed I didn’t go into muscle disease, which was his specialty, and I chose to go into brain diseases instead, but he was always supportive. He said, “Whatever you do”—he supported me. He encouraged people. He was on their side. He was also very humanist. He’s very kind, was quite a liberal person. He never talked bad about anybody. He said you should always look at the other point of view and see if you can—what’s wrong with their argument, try to argue against it if you disagree with it and explain yourself why. So, he was very open. He never had an enemy. Everybody liked him. He was that kind of a person. He was one of these unusual people.
TS: Were you and Dr. Rowland on the board—the foundation’s board at the same time?
SF: No, not at the same time.
TS: Okay.
SF: Everybody serves on the board if you’re president-elect, president, and past president, so I had those six years on the foundation board. I think Dr. Rowland—well, yeah. He might’ve been—some people serve who were not during their tenure of office, and then he might’ve come back on the board at some point. Possibly, he was on at the same time, but I just don’t remember that detail if he was. The board was always constantly changing. There’s always new members of the board, but I’m not sure if he was—
TS: With the foundation, it was the Education Research Foundation at one point and then the American Brain Foundation. When you served on the board, what were some of the challenges that you faced, that the board faced or the organization—
SF: Well, a major issue with the board even before I got on and then during and then after I got on was what is the object of the board? I mean, one of the early things in founding the board was the bringing in—
TS: The foundation you mean?
SF: Founding the foundation was, what is this foundation to do? Will it bring money from our patients or the community at large to support education and research? It was supposed to be education and research. Then, they were going to have publications for the laypeople, and then eventually it evolved into mostly research and fellowships. That’s its mission now, and we’re trying to get our Academy members to support it and not just people from the outside. It was always supposed to be a mixed bag of Academy members including the president and the leadership being members of the foundation’s board, as well as laypeople being members of the foundation board. So, it was a mixed thing to help neurology in general, but it really changed from education and research to just mostly research now.
TS: I know that you have an appointment that you need to go to, so I’m going to just close here with one last question. What was the best part of your presidency?
SF: Well, I would say, personally, it opened my eyes to what general neurology members want and need for their problems. I would talk to people because I was sort of isolated. I was a movement disorder person. I had lots of contacts in the international community. I got heavily involved with creating the Movement Disorder Society and international society, starting the first journal. I was first editor. And so, I had a narrower focus in neurology.
Becoming a president—starting with president-elect—I opened up. I had to go to the Practice Committee meetings. I had to go to the other committee meetings. All the different issues that were coming up in the Academy, I had to get involved with, I had to learn about it. So, it opened my eyes to many more things about neurology than I knew, and I certainly knew how to appreciate the Academy, how well organized it was. Very impressive. And so, I grew because of my involvement with the Academy. And so, I would say that helped me a lot. I still have friends from the time I was serving in the leadership community I didn’t have before. I wasn’t really close to these people because of my narrow specialty of movement disorders where I had plenty of friends already, and so this opened my eyes to the whole field of neurology and I thought that was wonderful. That’s one of the great things in the leadership field to be able to do that.
TS: Well, I want to thank you very much for your time coming down here to chat with me about your experiences and insights.
SF: Well, I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. I think this was a lot of fun.